Once in a while I discover a file backup is hung during the VSS snapshot phase. I believe this happens when the backup had started but then my Mac went to sleep. (The Windows VM was then put to sleep like any other Mac app - it's not the same as Windows itself entering a sleep a standby state.)

When I wake the Mac, I find Windows running normally, but the backup is stuck in the "creating snapshot" state.

There is no Cancel button, and I have not yet found a way to cleanly abort the backup process.

I don't think there is anything wrong with VSS in general, since 90% of the time, my backups and images work just fine. This just seems to be a timing glitch if my system is making a snapshot precisely when the Mac goes to sleep.

(There are other cases where the Mac goes to sleep in the middle of a Reflect backup, but as long as it is beyond the snapshot phase, the backup just continues from where it left off.)

In Task Manager, I see a Reflect.exe and a ReflectBin.exe. I may be misremembering this, but I think if I kill Reflect.exe, the UI disappears (the window that shows the backup progress) but ReflectBin.exe keeps running; and I cannot kill ReflectBin.exe. The process is non-stoppable.

The only way out that I've found is to shut down or reboot, and this never completes cleanly - I have to ultimately kill my virtual machine (which is the same as a normal Windows shutdown hanging, and then pressing the power button to finally shut down). Of course there are always some risks involved in that kind of shutdown.

I've tried to find some other process or service I could stop - any way at all to stop the in-progress snapshot.

There are discussions here and elsewhere about what to do if there are VSS errors -- but what is the best way to free or kill a hung VSS, or stop Reflect?

So, bumping this up, as I didn't get a response. The problem still happens from time to time. I sometimes find multiple pairs of reflect.exe and ReflectBin.exe running - presumably, the one executing pair stuck waiting for snapshot creation to end, and the other pairs waiting for that one to finish. I can kill all pairs but the one that is waiting for the snapshot.

It could be Windows snapshot creation that is stuck; but it could also be a problem in the interface between Reflect and the snapshot process.

Would be nice to be able to either kill Reflect, or kill the snapshot process, but I can't seem to do either.

So, bumping this up, as I didn't get a response. The problem still happens from time to time. I sometimes find multiple pairs of reflect.exe and ReflectBin.exe running - presumably, the one executing pair stuck waiting for snapshot creation to end, and the other pairs waiting for that one to finish. I can kill all pairs but the one that is waiting for the snapshot.

It could be Windows snapshot creation that is stuck; but it could also be a problem in the interface between Reflect and the snapshot process.

Would be nice to be able to either kill Reflect, or kill the snapshot process, but I can't seem to do either.

Ideas?

I go to Task Manager and kill all instances of Macrium when this happens.